THE BITS THAT MATTER – PARTS OF SPEECH

People think I can teach them style. What stuff it is. Have something to say and
say it as clearly as you can.That is the only secret to style.(Matthew Arnold)

A large section of the English education system went through a phase when
even a rudimentary knowledge of grammar was considered unnecessary. The
message was: “It’s what you think that’s important, not whether you can write, spell
or use words properly.” As a journalist who writes for a living, you should appreciate
that basic literacy is a core element of the job. If you never knew, or just need a
reminder, words are classified according to the job they do in a sentence. These are
the most important:
NOUN – common nouns are naming words (editor, television, albatross).They
can be singular or plural. A proper noun is a name and usually starts with a capital
letter (Denmark, Mars, Angela). Nouns which refer to collections of people and
things are called collective nouns (the team, the Cabinet).
VERB – verbs express action or a state of being (write, hit, be).
PRONOUN – pronouns take the place of nouns (he, her, we, them).
ADJECTIVE – an adjective is a describing word (Welsh, big, blue).
ADVERB – an adverb describes a verb or adjective (clearly, gracefully, finally,
suddenly).
PREPOSITION – prepositions are the little words which hold a sentence
together, often by showing direction or location (in, to, from, by, with, beyond).
Don’t worry. This is not a grammar book (far from it), but some or all of these
words may appear occasionally in the following pages. The first rule of writing is to
know what you want to say. This may seem a statement of the obvious, but items are
often broadcast which are not exactly what the writer intended:
• For the second time in six months, a prisoner at Durham jail has died after
hanging himself in his cell.
The ability of some people to die more than once is also illustrated in this
headline:
• A suicide bomber has struck again in Jerusalem.
The afterlife seems to exist according to this writer:
• Sixty women have come forward to claim they have been assaulted by a dead
gynaecologist.
It’s a good idea to remember the subject of the sentence:
• A walker crossing Tower Bridge spotted the body – it’s understood he was
about five-and-a-half and Afro-Caribbean.
And this remains true even if the police are involved:
• The police in Hounslow, west London, were so concerned about a surge in
street crime that they carried out a survey to discover why.
Who is getting on better with whom?
• The Liberal Democrats get on better with Labour than the Tories.
Lack of thought produces sentences such as this:
• It’s a sad and tragic fact that if you’re a farmer you are three times more
likely to die than the average factory worker.
An item on Bank Holiday traffic problems offered this unlikely spectacle:
 • There’s an overturned tractor trailer heading north on the M11.
The key to good writing is simple thoughts simply expressed. Use short
sentences and short words. Anything which is confused, complicated, poorly written
or capable of being misunderstood risks losing the listener or viewer, and once you
have done that, you might just as well not have come to work.
In broadcasting, the basic sentence structure Subject-Verb-Object works every
time. The audience grasps what you are saying straight away.
Anything more flamboyant, such as a subordinate clause, is a potential barrier to
understanding.
• With what his political opponents called a leap in the dark, the Prime Minister
today committed Britain to a European daylight saving regime.
Whose political opponents? Who are the political opponents? What leap in the
dark? Decide what you want to say and get on with saying it. Aim to be simple (not
simplistic), fluent and easy on the ear. Your first duty is to your audience, not to your
own idea of arresting prose.
Broadcasting is all about the spoken word, and good spoken English is at the
heart of what we do. There is a kind of journalese which flies in the face of this
simple truth. It has its origins in the press and in American radio, and some
broadcasters think it adds impact to their output. In real life, people do not say
Liverpool and England striker Michael Owen, or former Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, or Microsoft boss Bill Gates.
In conversation they would always use the definite article, and so should we. If
in doubt, ask yourself how you would tell the story to the man on the Manchester
tram, and use that as your guide.
You have a relationship with the audience, so try to make it a pleasant and
productive one. Here are some tips to consider:
• Do not describe news as good, bad, shocking or horrendous. Tell the story and
let the liste ner decide.
• Do not frighten off your audience. One presenter began his programme by
declaring that many people thought parliamentary reform was boring, but he was still
going to talk about it.
• Do try to get a strong active verb in the first sentence.You want to make an
impact and keep people listening.
• Do not start a news report with a question. The audience wants to be informed,
not take part in a quiz.
• Do not begin a story with As expected. If your item was predictable and you
have nothing new to say, why should the listener or viewer pay attention?
• Be positive. Make assertions wherever possible, and try to avoid negatives. It
is more direct to say The plan failed than The plan was not successful.
Despite the above, we are mainly dealing with advice, not rules.The most
interesting writing often involves creating something unexpected, and rules tend to
get in the way. But daily journalism has its discipline and that is the subject of this
guide.
The basics